Jazzing up your social media profile part 2

Posted At : July 22, 2010 6:42 PM | Posted By : Marita Greenidge
Related Categories: Social Media

By Corey Graham 2.0

Last week, we took a look at five ways to jazz up your social media profile. Here, we offer five more suggestions. 

1) Add like-minded people - Network 

In building up your profile and fan base it’s important to go out there and network with the people you want to attract. You might need to be the one to introduce yourself to them even that means you are the one to invite them to your page on Facebook or follow them on Twitter. You can join groups in your industry and choose a few people periodically to reach out to and find out more about them.

 
2) Applications
 
It’s worth taking a look though the application galleries of linkedin and facebook for useful applications. Some of the cool ones out there include my blogs, my flickr on facebook and google presentations and my travel on linkedin.  

3) Easy to remember custom URL

I suggest creating a URL that is easy to remember. If you wish to add your profiles to your business cards, develop a unique URL that can fit on business cards or email signatures. This URL also helps persons find you easily. 

4) Share good content & keep fresh

Seek to share good videos and articles that are relevant to the people you want to attract to your profile. Share a mixture of new developments and older acomplishments as both help to build a connection with followers. Great, engaging and consistent content keeps you on everyone’s mind. 

5) Participate in Group discussion and activities

‘The internet doesn't require your permission, just your participation’, Stephen Pierce

Your profile is the thing that identifies you, and allows you to interact and share with people around the world. It’s important to remember that you are a part of what is happening on these networks ... if you want to be. Don't allow yourself to become a spectator and just watch what is happening. You should aim to participate. You can interact with others as I started in tip #5, by adding comments on your friends pictures and statuses etc. You can take this one step further and you might want to lead a movement online or lead a petition. 

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Jazzing up your Social Media Profile Part 1

Posted At : July 16, 2010 12:10 AM | Posted By : Marita Greenidge
Related Categories: Social Media

By Corey Graham 2.0

Are you tired of your Facebook profile, unsure of how to make your Twitter page more attractive and would like to make your LinkedIn page work for you more? As a social marketing entrepreneur, I offer the following suggestions to jazz up your social media profiles.  
 
1) Provide full descriptions of your company
 
While we know what descriptions can do for us, we do not take the time to fill out the information adequately. You may not want to provide your phone number, but don’t leave your bio empty or short on useful information about your company.

One key point in filling out your information is to use some of the words that people might be searching for. If you work with a popular company, keep the popular name everyone knows in your descriptions rather than the corporate name which might not be well known. E.g. Blackberry vs RIM.

Twitter does not give you alot of space to write a very descriptive biography, however, you can communicate some of this info via your image as done by PixLD.

2) The role of Status updates & Tweets

Your status messages and tweets are great tools for attracting persons with similar interests as well as customers and business associates. By sharing your thoughts and actions you are building a relationship with your followers which enhances their buy-into your product or service.

Twitter enables the use of the # sign before the use of keywords in your status message, allowing people of similar interests to find you through Twitter searches. For example, if you are commenting from the perspective of a marketing consultant on a finance issue, #marketing and #finance is helps searchers of these topics find you.
 
3) Import Your Blogs
 
Automation is a beautiful thing. It lightens our load and frees us up to do other things. I would always advise persons to import their blogs into their Facebook, Twitter and linkedIn streams. It’s automatic marketing for your blog. It takes your blog goes to where the people already are.
 
4) Become Your Own Paparazzi

Adding pictures of the seminars and presentations and other events in the life of your company is a great way to jazz up your page.  As the saying goes ‘a picture is worth 1,000 words’.
 
5) Interact With Others

Take time to talk with others, comment on their status messages, photos, links, make recommendations etc. Make sure your comments are thoughtful and are relevant to the discussion. Your comments can be some of your best advertising. Insightful comments can push people to add you as a friend.

Stay tuned for more suggestions in Part 2. 

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Getting Started with Social Media

Posted At : July 1, 2010 11:15 PM | Posted By : Marita Greenidge
Related Categories: Social Media

By Corey Graham 2.0

Before you get started in Social Media marketing, there are a few things that you need to appreciate. 

Social Media marketing is essentially word of mouth marketing. It’s largely about persons spreading the word about your company and its products and services to others in your market. We all would have experienced this in some form or fashion. We might have a friend who raves so much about a particular product or service that it encourages us to purchase that product or service. Social media magnifies this by giving persons to the tools and the platform to spread the good word of their favourite company to a larger audience. Instead of telling one they can tell many via status updates, blog posts etc. Social media marketing is therefore designed to make it easy for people to share the good word about your company. 
 
Socially media marketing is all about empowering your customers. It’s your job to create an environment where your most passionate customers can be more involved and feel a part of your company. In fact, social media marketing makes them an essential part of your company's PR and marketing strategy by becoming the vehicle for your messages and offering feedback on things that affect the company. A powerful advantage of social media is that allows you to tell your stories the way you want to tell it. Additionally, it allows you to speak directly to these people who want to share the word on your company. Social media affords you a greater level control over what you put out there in the public domain. You have no real restrictions on the length of video, audio or articles that your fans can share with others. I also must say that the main challenge with social media is that it needs to be managed on a consistent basis to be effective. It will need to become an integral part of your organisation.
 
Now that we have established what social media marketing is about, how do we get started in building our social media presence? Start by familiarising yourself with the various social media platforms available, then approach their use as your own media channel. Use that media channel to tell your stories so that your fan base can share them via the social media platforms.
 
First determine the stories that fan base would want to hear and develop a schedule to publish these stories via the social media platforms. You may need to invest in the tools e.g. camera that would help you to tell your stories in an appropriate quality.
 
In telling these stories there are a few things to remember. You need to be authentic in what you publish, and focus on building a relationship with these persons who are in interested your business. You want to earn their trust and encourage them to be more loyal to you as you readily share the new developments in your business with them. Try to focus on being yourself and connecting with those persons who are interested in your brand. You want to empower them remember?
 
Finally, make sure to use the social networks that your fans spend their time on that is appropriate to your product or service. In deciding on the mix of social networks you want to use, it’s also important to also pay attention to how much effort it will take you to keep these social networks updated and to engage your customer appropriately. It makes no sense to have these networks and not have a way to keep them updated.

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